According to the Daily Bell, both Bitcoin and interest-free currencies are elite promotions. In fact, the elves at the Bell suspect both to be nothing less than “backdoor government psyops”.

But their feedbackers would have none of it:

– ‘ This article deals in a lot of FUD and zero facts. Bitcoin undermines the power of central banks and the Elite. Why would they create a tool like bitcoin that undermines their own power base, the creation of money.’

Good question, which the elves did not attempt to answer.

The article begins by denouncing Bitcoin as “a pure electronic, fiat currency with no metals backing at all”. However, another feedbacker notes:

– ‘ The author also makes the fallacious argument that bitcoin is “not backed by anything”. I’ve got news for him, neither is gold. Commodities are valued for what they are and what they enable people to do.’

This time, the elves replied: “Now it is true that money does not need utility. It simply needs to be accepted.”

Wait, did we read this correctly? So, if money “simply needs to be accepted”, why this constant harping about “pure electronic fiat currency”? The truth is that we do not need the means of exchange to be backed by precious metals. Even the Bell seems to be aware of it, although they never miss an opportunity to promote their “private gold-backed currencies”.

The Daily Bell appears to be quite obsessed with both Memehunter and Real Currencies, having exhibited a painful compulsion to refer indirectly but unmistakably to their past discussions with both of us in a series of articles, even though we have mostly left them alone for the last six months (in fact, Memehunter took a well-deserved break after the Daily Bell shut down its comment section).

However, these recent articles contain such blatant distortions that we deemed it necessary to attempt to rectify the situation. Furthermore, it is apparent that the elves over at the Bell cannot wait to debate again with us. It is our sincere hope that, by creating the Daily Knell, a blog dedicated to exposing libertarian lies, we have finally fulfilled their wish.

Although it is true that Alfred Orage, the editor of the New Age, promoted C. H. Douglas’ Social Credit, we learn from Wikipedia that “in an effort to discredit the Social Credit movement, one leading Fabian, Sidney Webb, is said to have declared that he didn’t care whether Douglas was technically correct or not – they simply did not like his policy” and that the British Labour Party resisted pressures to implement social credit, due to incompatibilities with “hierarchical views of Fabian Socialism”.

That does not sound like a ringing endorsement. It is also fairly obvious to anyone vaguely familiar with Social Credit that, partially flawed as this economic philosophy may be, it is most certainly not favorable to Money Power.

“Already in 1926, Ludwig von Mises’s first tour in the United States was paid by the Rockefeller Foundation. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which supported Mises in the 1940s, was also heavily sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Mises’s salary in New York was paid by Lawrence Fertig, Kohlberg’s colleague at the AJLAC [American Jewish League against Communism], and by the Volker Fund.”

In fact, as this chart suggests, Mises was very much at the center of an entire network connecting Libertarian think-tanks and foundations all the way to the top of Money Power.

Among other falsehoods propagated by the Daily Bell are the following:

– The annoying tendency to equate any non-commodity based currency with “governmental coercion”. Many alternative currencies, such as the Gelre or the Chiemgauer, are not based on governmental coercion and are not sponsored by the UN or UNESCO. Clearly, the Bell has a vested agenda in trying to equate any paper or digital currency with some kind of coercion, and in promoting the idea that the means of exchange should be commodity-based, an idea which is actually detrimental to free trade. Maybe this has to do with its partnership with a gold mining company?

– The tendency to lump together Stephen Zarlenga, Ellen Brown, and “a number of blogs attacking Austrian-based free-market economics”. In contrast with Real Currencies and the Daily Knell, Ellen Brown does not consider interest to be a problem. Although it is a step in the right direction to have government earn the interest rather than a private banking cartel, interest-free currencies would be a much better option. Moreover, Brown’s scheme is associated with severe power centralization, which we do not favor.

– Contrary to the Bell’s repeated assertions, we are not saying that interest should be banned. By offering interest-free mutual credit, people will naturally prefer to borrow in an interest-free currency rather than in an interest-bearing one. There is no need, in fact, for “coercion” of any kind. Memehunter frequently made this point on the Daily Bell (in the feedbacks), so we have to suspect that this is pure “sophistry” on the part of the elves.

– The claim that “Money Power does not care whether its control is exercised publicly or privately”. Although it is obvious that governments all over the world have been corrupted, and that politicians “can be controlled and bought”, the fact remains that, in principle, a public institution is accountable and should represent the interests of a nation, whereas there is no such obligation on a private institution. This is exactly why Money Power has worked hard to undermine the institution of government, and to progressively replace nations by larger economic blocs led by unelected technocrats instead of elected politicians, as is the case with the European Union.

Annunaki and Austrian “gold porn”

Moreover, the Daily Bell, together with other Austrian outlets, propagates various spurious economic ideas and myths which deserve to be exposed. For instance, this paragraph:

“People are free to find mines and dig up their own gold and silver. Drives the elites crazy. That’s why the elites are constantly trying to ban and confiscate honest money. The elites hate the free circulation of money metals.“

Of course, people can dig up their own gold and silver. But what good is that for? Will the world be a better place because everyone is busy mining gold and silver? Last we heard, Zecharia Sitchin and his theories had been debunked, but maybe some hardcore Libertarian goldbugs cling to the idea that humans were genetically engineered by the Annunaki to mine gold in South Africa…

In fact, this famous scene may be the ultimate fantasy of Austrian sympathizers favoring a return to an interest-bearing gold-backed currency:

“You see in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend. Those who loan gold, and those who dig. You dig.”

More seriously, we must remember that the means of exchange is basically credit, a record of an unpaid debt. There is no valid reason why the amount of credit available to a community should be limited by the amount of a scarce commodity. The Daily Bell unfailingly criticizes any monetary scheme involving some sort of human supervision with the oft-repeated argument that “no one can know how much money is enough”, but cannot justify why having the money supply tethered to the quantity of gold or silver available is in any way a guarantee that the money supply will be “monitored” more adequately and will correspond to the needs of a community.

Furthermore, whereas physical gold may be in some sense more “honest” than paper currency because it cannot be inflated so easily, it is debatable whether private gold-backed currencies are in any way more honest than paper or digital currency. Blogger FOFOA has explained this at length in “The Return to Honest Money”.

But the larger issue is that, although it may be an excellent store of value, physical gold is not well-suited as a means of exchange because of its scarcity. However, the Bell seems unable to distinguish between both monetary functions and refuses to understand why it is advisable to use different media for both, as brilliantly demonstrated once again by FOFOA.

The fact that the UN does seem to have started to promote LETS lately is obviously an attempt to co-opt it and thus is a source of concern. Why would the UN do so? LETS has suffered from two major drawbacks, keeping it from really threatening Money Power domination. The first is that it uses a working man’s hour as a unit of account. As a result, nobody knows what 1 LETS is really worth. Therefore businesses have been hesitant to accept LETS units.

Secondly, LET Systems have been managed by amateur community organizers, who have proven themselves incapable of organizing local trade in a way that transcends the level of the most primitive service exchanges between individuals. By promoting LETS as a viable ‘complementary currency’, it’s likely that the UN has willingly promoted a non-threatening ‘alternative’. In no way has the UN been shown to promote, help develop or even investigate what is necessary to threaten the Money Power monopoly on currencies worldwide.

The Daily Bell in its discussions with both Memehunter and Real Currencies, but also with people like Ellen Brown, has resorted to misrepresentation and downplaying of valid points. Already in the early stages of the discussion, we pointed out that it was quite obvious that if government creates a monopoly, it is much worse to have it hand that monopoly over to a private banking cartel than to have Government use it to print its own interest-free currency. Notwithstanding the fact that such a monopoly is uncalled for, this simple transfer would save the taxpayer 450 billion per year. All this interest now ends up with wealthy “Anglosphere power-elite” bankers and foreign creditors and thus in no way serves the real economy.

Additionally, the Daily Bell did everything it could to downplay the interest issue. The elves ignored the fact that it’s a massive wealth transfer from poor to rich, to the tune of 5 to 10 trillion per year globally. They also tried to explain it away as irrelevant to the issue of manipulation of volume, which is not only untrue (interest does affect the volume issue, as ever more money is required to pay ever more interest, thus leading to an eternally growing money supply, a situation which is obviously terminally unstable), but also clearly is just a trick to get the issue off the table.

And lastly, how can it be that the swashbuckling elves of the Bell ridiculously need a politician like Ron Paul to implement their vaunted free market? How can it be that this man has been promoting the same crap for 40 years? Is that consistency or an acute disability to learn? Or is it perhaps a party line that had to be toed? Why do the elves need “violent statist coercion” to get what they want, while people all over the world are creating regional currencies based on agreement and not coercion?

We know the answer: Gold will not work as an everyday means of exchange in a truly free market. Ron Paul and the Daily Bell, through their Agora connection, are part of a large network parading as a grassroots movement. They both represent Gold interests and need state coercion to get their specie accepted for tax payments and thus get an unfair and almost decisive advantage in the ‘free market’ for currencies.

Nothing new under the sun… Just some more Money Power special interest groups trying to manipulate the debate and buy votes in Washington.

In this article, Memehunter explores the murky underworld of the Libertarian movement, in the wake of blogger Lila Rajiva’s stunning revelations about the “long-standing relationship” between Ron Paul and the founder of financial behemoth Agora Inc., with which the well-known libertarian website The Daily Bell is affiliated. The ramifications of the partnership between the Daily Bell, known for its strident “gold bug” mindset, and gold mining concern Dicon Gold Inc. are also discussed.

The Daily Bell, a leading libertarian website known as much for its staunch support of Austrian economics as for its strident “gold bug” mindset, recently featured an article entitled “The Ron Paul Hoax?” which attempted to defend Ron Paul’s reputation in the wake of a series of articles on Clint Richardson’s Reality Blog showing Paul to be essentially nothing more than a fraud. Although the Bell admits to having doubts about the efficacy of Paul’s “Audit the Fed” legislation, they refuse to believe that Paul himself is a fraud. Of course, one may wonderhowmuchevidence the Bell and its supporters will need before accepting the truth.

But more importantly, this unshakeable belief in Ron Paul as “the world’s only apparently honest politician” (no less!) strikes one as an inscrutable paradox in the face of these recent revelations about Paul’s character, especially coming from an anarcho-capitalist website that purports to denounce party politics, Western-style democracy, and the institution of government in general.

Ron Paul and the Agora Empire

One clue to this enigma has recently been provided by blogger Lila Rajiva, co-author with William Bonner (president of the publishing company Agora Inc.) of the bestseller Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, and herself a libertarian sympathizer. In a scathing article, Rajiva revealed that the Daily Bell is closely associated with the Agora network, a large conglomerate known for its financial newsletters promoting “get-rich-quick” schemes and assorted penny stocks, all the while touting bogus “free markets” and Austrian faux economics.

Agora also appears to have ties with the Rockefeller dynasty via Peter G. Peterson, longtime chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and chief backer of the film “IOUSA”, whose content was inspired by Bonner and Wiggin’s book Empire of Debt. Going even deeper, Rajiva finds all kinds of shady characters associated with Agora, including ex-CIA director William Colby and Le Cercle member Lord Rees-Mogg, a close associate of the Rothschilds.

But the real stunner was Rajiva’s disclosure that Ron Paul had “a long-standing relationship” with Agora founder James Davidson, via Murray Rothbard. Perhaps not surprisingly, Agora and its affiliates, including the Daily Bell, have until recently been indefatigable promoters of Paul’s political platform. However, the Daily Bell has never mentioned its ties to Agora, which would obviously throw into question the Bell’s credibility as an impartial observer of the political and financial scene.

“Private gold-backed currencies” and Colombian gold mines

Another reason why the Daily Bell, itself an ardent promoter of privately gold-backed currencies, is enraptured with Paul’s unremitting advocacy of the gold standard could be that the directors of the Bell have a vested interest in a return to a gold standard, and more generally a larger role for gold and silver as circulating currencies. Indeed, as Diana Zoppa, an advisor to the Daily Bell, acknowledged in an interview with Kerry Lutz of the Financial Survival Network, Zoppa’s hiring by the Daily Bell was facilitated by the existence of a business partnership between the directors of the Bell and Zoppa’s husband, Shawn Perger, owner of a gold-mining company called Dicon Gold Inc., whose main assets are found in Colombia.

This partnership seems to have been a very close one because Perger and Zoppa apparently followed Daily Bell founder Anthony Wile and moved to Switzerland (the Daily Bell’s home base until recently) for a few years. We also learn from the Daily Bell that Perger and his team “have built deep social relationships with the wealthier and more private Colombian families who have held the ownership rights of some very attractive gold projects”. Coincidentally or not, the Daily Bell has been, of late, very vocal in its support of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe’s pro-business administration and “free-market strategies”, and has even established an “on-the-ground editorial presence” in Colombia.

Conclusion

As with most of the alternative media, the Daily Bell does play an important role in opening the eyes of “red pill” newcomers who are exposed for the first time to a non-mainstream view of politics and economics. The Bell has not been afraid to tackle controversial issues, including questioning the veracity of the official accounts of the Apollo XIII mission and of Osama bin Laden’s death. Nevertheless, the Bell’s refusal to address the issue of usury, its blatant dismissal of the Zionist role in the New World Order conspiracy, coupled with its relentless pro-gold and pro-Paul propaganda, are symptomatic of a larger malaise in the alternative media. It is time for dedicated truthseekers to move past these gatekeepers and their phony dialectic, in order to continue their quest for real alternatives and authentic solutions to the monetary, political, and spiritual issues of our age.

I documented how, since then, they shot the messenger as their Alexa ranking tanked. They claim that they had 17 million page views just for the month of June 2012, showing that their earlier 20-25 million hits claim likely wasn’t a typo.

I pointed out how Mish Shedlock’s site had a higher Alexa ranking — and still does — and his independent confirmation of readership numbers shows he had 21 million page hits for the entire year in 2011.

As for my page hits, independent confirmation is available from WordPress on my homepage, and anyone can track the daily numbers by tracking the cumulative page hits from day-to-day.

I provided a critical analysis of a recent article by the Daily Bell on tally sticks on my August 5, 2012 episode of Exposing Faux Capitalism.

Having been exposed as a banker front and squarely beaten on all the issues that Austrianism is famous for, the Daily Bell seems to be making a last ditch effort to reclaim lost fame….

In Q1 of this year Real Currencies got involved in an all out discussion with the Daily Bell, which was quickly picked up by the indefatigable Memehunter. Our series of articles on the lies and obfuscations of Austrianism and the way it was built by the Money Power as the other side of the dialectic with Marxism was inspired by this intellectual war. Henry Makow, who had been exposing Libertarianism for years, gave us the platform needed for this kind of effort.

Memehunter, meanwhile, made the incredible effort of waging the war in the Daily Bell’s comment section for months on end. Facing four powerful ‘elves’.

In all fairness: the Daily Bell not only continued to allow this, they took him on all guns blazing. They could, of course, have denied him further access, as is quite common when people deliver unwelcome feedback.

But they lost. Ignominiously. They tried everything, every trick in book was used to misrepresent Memehunter, to make him look ridiculous and basically to just wear him down. But he hung in there and four professionals, payed well with the proceeds of usurious usurpation, eventually simply gave up.

They closed their comment section and Faux Capitalist (who had been on the DB’s case earlier on a number of controversial issues) reported:
“….its Alexa ranking has tanked, showing that by May 27, it had a one-month ranking of 106,899, a 7-day ranking of 96,710, and a 3-month ranking of 71,591. (at their peak they were hovering around 30,000, AM)

Once its three-month ranking falls below 100,000, it will no longer warrant Alexa’s daily compilation of in-depth statistics. I see that it has fallen so far that the confidence factor of the visitor demographic information is down from a high level of confidence to only medium.”

Since then their readership has been plummeting even further, and as Faux Capitalist predicted, they are trying to put a strategy together.

With the medieval slogan ‘memento mori’, and Anthony Wile’s concept of the ‘Internet Reformation’ they are trying to regain lost favor. They will also reopen their comment section, but only for registered users. Even to read the comments, one will have to register. This does not bode well: such barriers are not popular on the Internet.

Also they have come up with a rather ‘interesting’ logo:

The skull refers to the memento mori slogan, the clock at 5 to 12 speaks for itself. The roses refer to the people spreading anti-Nazi propaganda in Germany during the 1930′s under the name ‘White Rose’. How this relates to the blatant Nazi colors (red, black and white) of the logo, combined with the strangely Germanic font remains an open question.

For the time being, it seems, the real supporters of freedom from Money Power suppression do not need to be overly worried by the Daily Bell’s efforts to reinvent itself after being so horribly exposed.

Thanks to Memehunter, who informed me that as of April 25, 2012, TheDailyBell.com has disabled all comments on their articles.

“Effective April 25, 2012, the Daily Bell will discontinue allowing feedback comments. We have left in place the large body of responses posted in the past, as we appreciate the valuable contributions made by some of our readers.”

Under increased scrutiny from myself, Anthony Migchels, Memehunter and others who realize what the Daily Bell is really all about, I noticed they are finally drawing a distinction between public and private central banks.

Gary North’s so-called free market gold standard is also a government-guaranteed gold standard, since it relies upon government enforcement of contracts, which is essential to the Money Power being able to enforce their ultimately unpayable debts that accrue compound interest, and collecting your assets once you default.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

- John Donne (1572-1631), Meditation XVII

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